


Rebuild What's Gone Unsteady (The Magic and Mortar Remix)

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Remix Duello 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:31:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A school is nothing without its children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebuild What's Gone Unsteady (The Magic and Mortar Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ailelie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailelie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Rebuild What's Gone Unsteady](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1626) by Ailelie. 



It is broken by the war; it is betrayed, and after it is over it is alone. It waits, a huddled, hurt thing, because it has no choice: it waits while they bury their dead and apportion the blame, it waits while they promise that this will never be allowed to happen again. And finally they come to rebuild it, to patch its holes with plaster and charms, and spell away the curses, until it is almost new again.

And still there are no children there. Hogwarts is built of spells as much as stone, and very old, and like all things that are magic and ancient, it has become more than it was meant to be. Sometimes it dreams, quiet and content, for a decade or two, for fifty years. But it roused for Grindelwald, for the defense of Britain, and it watched Tom Riddle and the boy who called himself the Prince and the boys and girls who made themselves into an Army.

It loved them, as much as a thing that is not quite sentient, that has no soul, can love. It wants them back. It was made for a purpose, and now it has become the purpose. Now it calls them home.

For generations, Hogwarts students have studied and grown and gone out into the world and come back to teach. They are so lovely, so familiar. Brave, steadfast Minerva, and Neville, who is gentle and fierce by turns. These are the children Hogwarts raised, the children who won two wars.

It wants them back, all of them. Stalwart Hufflepuff and noble Gryffindor; clever Slytherin and learned Ravenclaw-- the Founders who built Hogwarts and their descendants who maintain it-- it wants them, and their descendants.

It means to have them back, and Neville is its instrument. Bring them home, it says to him, and it lends him courage and strength, ambition and knowledge. And so it sends him after Lisa's competence and Pansy's fearlessness, Adrian's vision and Daphne's narrow brilliance.

He never says the word _home_ to them. The spells he casts, the charms he speaks, the longing in his voice and the pictures they draw with it-- these things are Neville's magic, born of a lonely boy for whom school was a chance at salvation. It is love as much as it is anything Hogwarts makes him do. It is what Hogwarts has made him.

One by one its children come back to it. All of them are changed, tempered or defeated by the war and the world. All of them are the children it remembers, still. Lost Dean, troubled Lavender, shadowed Harry, Roger and Zacharias and quiet, faithful Hannah.

There are holes, still, scars where the Greenies set plaster, where smiling faces have gone away forever. But sometimes broken things are strongest where they've been mended. There are children in the halls of Hogwarts again, children snug in their beds in the dormitories, children running and laughing and fighting and crying.

Wizards dream of food and sex, death and magic. Hogwarts dreams of children in matching robes with crests on the pockets. Dreaming, it is happy.


End file.
